


awake unto me

by tuntekorpp



Series: Magicians Leverage AU [1]
Category: The Magicians (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Leverage Fusion, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Buried Alive, Con Artists, M/M, Magic, Pre-Relationship, inspired by The Grave Danger Job
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-10
Updated: 2019-09-10
Packaged: 2020-10-14 02:16:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 13,822
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20593028
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tuntekorpp/pseuds/tuntekorpp
Summary: “Alright. New case. Someone is fucking up with dead bodies.” There’s a collective groan at that. Dealing with necrophilia was one time too many. “It’s not necrophilia,” Margo counters. “Irene McAllistair and her brother are embezzling money from the dying and the grieving. Classic grift.”“Cruel grift,” Eliot says. “Even I never ran that one. It’s tacky.”“That’s saying something,” Quentin mutters in his bowl and gets Eliot’s pointy elbow in his ribs in retaliation.“Hey, I’ve always grifted classy.”“Uh-uh, what about—”“Nope, we’re not going there.”“Hey, dickholes,” Margo cuts. “You can flirt all you want once I’m done, but until then, you shut the fuck up.”or the Magicians crew is a group of Magicians/con-artists Leverage style.or a heist goes sideways and Eliot needs to deal with his feelings.





	awake unto me

**Author's Note:**

> Leverage is my fav tv shows, The Grave Danger Job is one of the best episodes and so full of hurt/comfort potential so I obviously couldn't pass on the opportunity of making it about Quentin and Eliot.

The world is pitch black when Quentin opens his eyes. His memories are hazy—no recollection of going to take a nap comes to mind. He’s lying down, his arms at his sides, and everything around him is deadly quiet, that he knows for sure. He brings his hands in front of him to cast a lighting spell but nothing happens. He tries again. He can’t see his hands, but he’s done this spell so many times, the tut is all muscle memory by now.

Still nothing.

He sighs. His breath comes back in his face immediately, the air bouncing back on something close above him. He brings his hands up. It feels like wood under his fingertips.

Just as he feels a slight freak out coming up, something vibrates on his stomach, an obnoxious ringtone following right after.

Quentin fumbles in the dark. It’s a flip phone—he hopes he didn’t travel back in time, horomancy was never his strong suit and he has absolutely no desire to relive the 00s. The phone keeps vibrating. He opens it.

“Wakey wakey,” comes a voice through the speakers.

“Where am I?” Quentin asks with a raspy voice. Has he been screaming before?

“See for yourself.”

He uses the light coming from the phone screen to examine his surroundings and his incoming freak out becomes an incoming panic attack. There’s a wooden plank a few inches above him. Another plank on each side of him, and one under him, one behind his head, one at his feet. All of them are engraved with runes and sigils. Magic blocking stuff.

He is in a fucking coffin and he has seen enough movies to know that you don’t wake up in a coffin that’s in a viewing room.

The eerily silence of earlier makes sense now.

He’s been buried alive.

-

_A week earlier_

“Listen up, fuckers,” Margo shouts as she barges into the penthouse they acquired perfectly legally—if you turn a blind eye on her stealing it along with a _few_ millions from a crooked asshole who honestly had it coming. You just don’t raise the price of insulin more than 800% without consequences. The penthouse is now their headquarters slash living quarters. “We have a new one!”

She plants herself in front of the couch, waiting for her crew to move their asses.

Quentin takes his bowl of cereal from the kitchen island to the couch, plopping down between Kady, who’s busy polishing her blades and paying no attention to Margo at all, and Eliot, who’s arguing with Fen about the proper name of one particular con—or rather, Eliot is monologuing while Fen produces well timed and disinterested “hmm-mm” and “oh right” because she might be a sweetheart, but she’s not really the kind to care about the proper names of cons since she isn’t the one performing them. She’s more what one would call their support team. The crew wouldn’t last a day without her taking care of and improving their non-magical equipment.

Margo waits some more, but when the rest of the crew doesn’t appear, she takes a deep breath.

“TEAM MEETING NOW,” she yells at the top of her lungs, her fists on her hips and not giving a fuck about the eardrums of the people sitting two feet from her. Eliot stops talking and, realizing that Quentin and his bowl are next to him, promptly steals a handful of Fruit Loops from it. He smirks when Quentin glares at him. Margo rolls her eyes.

Julia appears on the catwalk above the open plan living room-kitchen-office and gracefully climbs down the spiral staircase. She sits down at Quentin’s feet, using his knee as an armrest.

Alice arrives a few seconds later with the dazed face of someone who has spent way too many hours stuck in books for research. She smooths out her skirt and kneels down on the floor on Kady’s left.

“So,” Margo starts.

“Hey, where’s Penny?” Quentin cuts.

Margo glares at him. “He was with me when we found our new case. I sent him on an errand.”

Quentin raises his (full) hands in surrender and motions for her to continue. It looks like he’s bowing before her. She grins.

“Alright. New case. Someone is fucking up with dead bodies.” There’s a collective groan at that. Dealing with necrophilia was one time too many. “It’s not necrophilia,” Margo counters. “Irene McAllistair and her brother are embezzling money from the dying and the grieving. Classic grift.”

“Cruel grift,” Eliot says. “Even I never ran that one. It’s tacky.”

“That’s saying something,” Quentin mutters in his bowl and gets Eliot’s pointy elbow in his ribs in retaliation.

“Hey, I’ve always grifted classy.”

“Uh-uh, what about—”

“Nope, we’re not going there.”

“Hey, dickholes,” Margo cuts. “You can flirt all you want once I’m done, but until then, you shut the fuck up.”

Quentin glares at Eliot—again—who wriggles his eyebrows before turning to Margo.

“Of course, Bambi. Do continue.”

“As I was saying, they’re embezzling money. Their funeral license is legit and they’ve been operating in upstate New York for the past five years.”

“Okay yeah so, that sucks and all, but why is it our problem?” Kady asks.

“Has no one reported them to the police?” Alice adds, making Kady snorts. Saying that Kady isn’t a huge believer in the utility of the police is a euphemism.

“They have been, but they’re good at erasing the evidence. One would even say they’re fucking crime geniuses. Also they’re Magicians. All of them, which is why it’s our problems. Can’t let the Muggles to deal with them, obviously.”

Penny pops into the room with blueprint tubes under his arm, coughing and his eyes red.

“This is the last time I’m going into a fucking city hall basement. Don’t these people know about cleaning?” he complains, dropping the tubes on the coffee table and then brushing the dust and cobwebs from his shirt. “Jesus Christ I thought I was gonna have an asthma attack!” He sits heavily on the armrest next to Kady and drops a kiss on her temple. “Hey, babe.”

“Are you done,” Margo says flatly. Penny rolls his eyes. “As I was saying, _again_,” Margo says, flipping her hair back, “we can’t let the Muggles deal with them, because we don’t know whether they’re using magic in their business. Like corpse magic or some shit like that.”

Fen’s eyes go wide. “That’s a thing?!”

Sweet summer child Fen, always shocked by how fucked up humans are—and Magicians even more so.

Alice sighs. “Unfortunately.”

She doesn’t extrapolate, but they have long learned not to question Alice’s knowledge or where it comes from. She was gone for a little over a year when they were all still students at the Brakebills College of Magic and when she came back, she had this haunted look to her, older than her years. She wasn’t very talkative before but the Alice who came back rarely uttered a word. She’s doing better these days, but they all know she’ll never be the Alice they met in first year. They’ve made their peace with it, and all they can do is make sure not to reopen old wounds, whatever those may be.

Margo motions at the tubes Penny brought back. “We’re gonna study the shit out of these, then go do some recon directly at the funeral home. We need to destroy that pathetic woman’s life,” she ends with a grin.

She knows she has a glint in her eyes, because Eliot has it too and Quentin almost looks scared. It’s not his first heist, far from it, but Margo knows that he’ll always be intimidated by how much she loves destroying shitty people’ lives. A girl needs a hobby, after all.

She sits down in front of the coffee table and uncaps the tubes. Julia and Alice immediately join her in the study of the blueprints while Penny stretches out on the back of the couch.

“Fuck this, I’m taking a shower,” he says before popping out of the room—apparently, walking and climbing up the stairs is for losers.

Eliot goes to the kitchen to “prepare everyone some research snacks and Quentin, please stop eating that overprocessed crap, that’s disgusting.” Kady gives her blades to Fen for finale inspection and Quentin goes into research mode, while still eating his Fruit Loops because he’s too full of pride to ever listen to Eliot about food.

A few hours later, everyone congregates on the couch, except that couch isn’t big enough to hold five people comfortably so they all sort of end up piled up on each other with elbows and knees in uncomfortable places. Alice, Margo and Julia stand in front of them. Alice conjures the giant screen.

“Okay,” Julia starts. The picture of a white woman with a strawberry blond blow out fills the screen. She looks rich and smug and utterly obnoxious. “Meet Irene McAllistair. The entire McAllistair family is made of Magicians. They’re old New-England blood and on the board of—” Brakebills, their old school, appears on the screen. “Brakebills.”

Eliot leans forward, his elbows on his knees. “Wait up, are we going to have to con this entire family? Because that’s fucking insane.”

“Agreed,” Quentin says between two bites of one of Eliot’s absolutely divine raspberry scones—much better than the Fruit Loops, but he’ll never admit that, Eliot’s ego doesn’t need the help.

Margo rolls her eyes. “Let’s keep the questions for the end, okay? But no, El, we’re not gonna con them all.”

“Right,” Julia says. “See, Irene is kind of the black sheep of the family. Some businesses of hers went wrong and she and her brother ended up being cast aside. We’re going against _them_.”

“Oh good, much better,” Eliot says, leaning back.

Quentin snorts. “Is it?”

Eliot pats his knee. Quentin still doesn’t know if that was sarcasm or not.

“_Anyway_,” Alice says in that tight, nervous way of hers, “they have stolen hundreds of thousands of dollars but it’s not in any bank. Their accounts are completely clean. No trace of the money anywhere.”

“Because they’re paranoid motherfuckers,” Margo says in stride. “We think they have it all in a safe. Probably magical, probably similar to the one we saw during the bank heist.”

Penny groans. Almost suffocating to death once was enough for him, as he loves to remind them, quite often and quite loudly.

“The safe might be in their funeral home, which is also their own home,” Margo continues, ignoring Penny entirely. The blueprints of the house replace a picture of Irene and her brother. “Refrigeration and embalming rooms in the basement, office, viewing room and ceremony rooms on the ground floor and their living quarters are on the last floor.”

Penny winces. “They live there? Ugh. Fucking creeps.”

Kady shrugs. “It’s just dead bodies, not zombies.”

“So what’s the plan?” Eliot asks before Penny can argue some more.

“Recon!” Margo announces brightly. “Search the funeral home, find the safe, plan the heist, do the heist, run those fuckers to the ground. Funeral homes are busiest on the weekends, so it’ll be the perfect time to blend in with the mourners.”

Quentin chokes on his scone and coughs. Eliot pats him absentmindedly on the back and gives him his glass of water.

“What?” Quentin finally says in a strangled voice, before draining Eliot’s glass in one go.

“You heard me, Coldwater,” Margo smirks. “Alright, Penny, you’re searching the three floors for the safe. Alice, Julia, you’re gonna infiltrate one of the funerals. Some rich old dude died, you’ll be his nieces thrice removed or some shit like that. No rich family keeps track of all the descendants anyway. Kady, there’s another funeral in the other ceremony room, you’ll infiltrate that one. You’ll all look for the safe there, but keep an eye on for anything weird.”

“Tell me I’m not gonna have to play a rich girl,” Kady says.

Julia snorts. “Nope, apparently it’s a low level criminal funeral.”

“Perfect.”

“What about us?” Eliot asks, gesturing between himself, Quentin, and Margo.

“Quentin, you’ll go meet Irene,” Alice says. “Pretend your great-aunt is close to death and you need Irene’s services.”

Quentin frowns. “Uh. Why me? Eliot’s the actor, not me.” Not to mention that he is a _terrible_ liar.

“Seconded,” Eliot nods.

“Eliot’s our best grifter, we can’t have Irene seeing him right at the start,” Alice replies, fidgeting with the sleeves of her sweater. “We have to keep him as our Joker.”

“Still,” Quentin says. “I’m not great at being someone else. Why can’t you do it, Margo?”

“I’m overseeing that shit, I can’t do everything, Coldwater. Just be your nervous self, look like an adorable frightened bunny and Irene will see an easy prey in you. That’s the point,” Margo huffs.

Quentin opens his mouth, confused, and freezes for a second, before slowly repeating her words. “Adorable frightened bunny…?”

Margo laughs and leaves the room with a “Get ready, fuckers!”

Quentin, still confused, turns toward Eliot, who pats his knee again and nods with a smile that says “yep, that’s your life now.”

-

Becoming a crew of Magicians con artists/vigilantes hadn’t been their plan after graduating from Brakebills.

Eliot and Margo were a year ahead of the rest of them and graduated together. Eliot, as talented a Magician as he was, wanted to be an actor. He was good at becoming anyone, he knew how to sing, how to move, and he was good looking. There was no way he was going to fail. He moved to New York City and did audition after audition, relentlessly.

In his last year before graduation, Quentin received a few invitations to go see Eliot on stage and he always went—because it was important to him to show his support, but mostly because he missed Eliot. They’d have a drink or five after the show, and catch up with each other’s lives. Eliot would tell him Margo was fine, always fine, having fun in the world’s most glamorous cities with one member of the elite or another. One night, he brought a new girl to the bar, someone he had met during a production, a firecracker with big blue eyes and a bigger smile—she wasn’t a Magician, but she knew about magic. It was Fen. She was almost always there after that night and Quentin would’ve fell in love with her if his depression hadn’t come back and stripped him of his interest in relationships.

Eventually, Quentin, Julia, Alice, Kady and Penny graduated.

Julia went into research about Metamagic, like the brilliant Knowledge student that she had been.

Alice also went into research, but her subject was more obscure and nebulous and in the end, she didn’t talk about it that much.

Quentin lost track of Kady and Penny, but they had never been that close to begin with. He moved to Boston, found a job in a Magician-owned bookstore and had been happy with his quiet life for quite a while. He was meeting with Julia and Alice regularly, having coffee and hearing about their—well Julia’s mostly—research.

He kept going to Eliot’s shows. Then the invitations to New York became few and far between. Eliot wasn’t on stage that much anymore, but he ironically became less available at the same time.

Quentin resigned himself to it. College friends grew apart. It happened all the time. He hadn’t expected it to happen to his and Eliot’s friendship but life sucked, right?

Out of the blue, Eliot showed up in person at the bookstore one day. He had more stubble than usual and his hair wasn’t expertly done in neat curls, but it was Eliot, and his smile when he saw Quentin was blinding. He told him he had a project with Margo, he wanted Quentin to work on it too, move back to New York, the three of them getting back together “just like old times.”

For some reason, Quentin agreed to come back with him, to a Williamsburg loft a struggling actor wouldn’t have been able to afford.

Margo was there, along with Penny and Kady, who looked more or less the same than they had in school, while Margo had lost her party girl façade for something more serious, more ruthless.

Eliot did the explaining. They were a crew of con artists, but they were only targeting bad Magicians for whom the law was useless. Magical modern Robin Hoods, Margo called them.

They needed someone to do the research, and they trusted him.

That’s how it started.

Later, Julia, then Alice joined them. Fen stuck around too.

They got good. Maybe too good. Maybe they have become cocky, arrogant, too confident in their abilities.

Maybe that’s why Quentin is stuck in a coffin right now—not even a casket, with nice silk lining and a pillow, but a crude, plank only, coffin.

-

On Saturday morning, Eliot barges in Quentin’s room without knocking, because honestly, after Brakebills and then having been living and working together for a few years, personal space isn’t something that actually exists between them.

Quentin doesn’t even jump anymore when Eliot does that. He just looks up at him from his dresser drawer and raises an eyebrow in question.

“Do you know what you’re wearing to meet Irene?” Eliot asks.

Quentin nods toward his bed, where a tragic dark blue suit lays, next to an even more tragic red tie. Eliot stares at him. He’ll always be utterly baffled by Quentin’s total lack of fashion sense.

“Is that your graduation suit?” he asks, knowing full well it is. Quentin shrugs. “Q, you graduated five years ago.”

“It’s still good.”

“Oh honey, no.”

“What’s wrong with this suit?”

“The better question would be what _isn’t_ wrong with that suit.” Quentin rolls his eyes. “I’m serious, Q. We need Irene to believe you’re loaded.”

Quentin sighs and closes his drawer. “Alright, what do you have in mind?”

Eliot walks up to him and puts his hand on Quentin’s shoulders. They’re standing close enough that Quentin has to tilt his head up to look at Eliot in the eyes. “Do you give me permission to do whatever I see fit, for the benefit of the con, of course?”

Quentin scowls. “Do I even have a choice.”

Eliot smiles. “No.”

He slides an arm around Quentin’s shoulders and drags him away from the catastrophe that’s his wardrobe and out of the room.

“You do know that none of your fancy stuff is going to fit me, right?” Quentin says when they get into Eliot’s room.

“Oh, ye of little faith.”

He sits Quentin down on the bed and goes to his closet—although calling it a dressing room wouldn’t be far fetched. He has _standards. _He retrieves a garment bag from the back of it.

“Here, put this on.”

Quentin gives him a quizzical look. Eliot crosses his arms and waits until Quentin folds.

“Are you gonna watch me undress?” Quentin asks when Eliot gives no sign of turning away. Eliot smirks. “Never mind, don’t answer that.”

Eliot huffs a laugh and leaves the room. He goes to the living room, mixes two cocktails and comes back just as Quentin is buttoning his waistcoat.

“Do I wanna know why you just happen to have a three pieces suit fitting me perfectly in your closet?”

Eliot puts Quentin’s glass on the dresser and leans against the wall, sipping his own cocktail.

“I’ve had it custom made.”

Quentin stops fiddling with the buttons and just stares. “You what.”

“In case of a situation just like this one. I knew you weren’t going to be the one worrying about having a good suit.”

“How did you get my measurements?”

“Fen. She had to take them for that harness rappelling thing, remember?”

Quentin sighs. He grabs the jacket, slate gray like the rest of the suit, and puts it on, then he faces Eliot and turns on himself, arms spread.

“How do I look?”

“Alright.”

“Alright?”

Eliot hums before walking to his dresser. He opens the first drawer and takes one of the boxes stashed in it.

“What’s that?” Quentin asks.

“Cuff links,” Eliot says, and takes a pair out of the box—silver and diamond, minimalist and showoff-y at the same time.

He turns to Quentin and fixes the cuff links for him.

“They look obscenely expensive,” Quentin says.

“They are. Irene will notice them.” Eliot takes a step back and observes his work. “Your hair,” he says after a few seconds.

“Do not cut my hair,” Quentin says immediately.

Eliot gives him a flat look. “I’m offended you’d think I’d ever do that to you. I like your hair,” he says and Quentin’s cheeks have gone the slightest bit of pink. “It just need a bit of styling.”

A few hours later, they’re almost ready to go. They make sure the spell that allows them to communicate between each other without anyone else hearing it is working, Penny checks their mental wards and Julia and Alice—both stunning in their black dresses and elegant hairdos—leave first via portal.

“There is no anti-traveler wards,” Alice says in their ears a couple of minutes later.

Penny takes Kady’s hand and they disappear together. Quentin is the only one going there the traditional way—with Margo’s car and a few dozens threats of what could happen to his bodily integrity if he fucks up her baby.

“C’mon, Bambi, we all know you wouldn’t actually hurt our little Q,” Eliot says when she doesn’t seem to be stopping in her threats. She turns to him and squints. Quentin grabs that opportunity to leave the penthouse as fast as he can.

Margo rolls her eyes and flops down on the couch next to Eliot.

Fen isn’t here either, having to run an errand related to knives or any other of Kady’s weapons—Kady loves her blades, despite being a Master in Battle Magic. “Sometimes the Muggle way is more fun,” she replied one time when he asked about it. She had grinned like a shark and twirled a blade and Eliot had made himself the promise to never ever get on her bad side, no matter how self-destructive he was feeling.

Margo tuts to mute the communication spell and motions at him to do the same. They can still hear the others, but the others can’t hear what they’re saying. Eliot tuts and looks at her expectantly.

“What is it, Bambi?”

She sighs. “Are you ever gonna do something about it?”

“About what?”

“Q.”

Eliot sinks down in the couch. “We’re friends. Best friends. Nothing to do about it. It’s great. We’re great.”

“Wow, that was convincing,” Margo says, her voice dripping with sarcasm. “You wanna try that again?”

“Feelings are scary, Bambi,” he mutters. “We have a good thing, a good balance right now. I don’t want to destroy that.”

“Why do you think you’d destroy it, El?”

He snorts, ugly and self-deprecating. “Uh, hello? Have you met me? I ruin every good thing that happens to me.”

Margo takes his hand. “You don’t, tho.”

She doesn’t say, but he knows she means their friendship, the crew, his friendship with Fen—that he didn’t burn to the ground despite the fact that she was in love with him at first.

“I don’t want to lose him,” he says softly without looking at Margo. “It’s easier to pretend than to risk losing him.”

“Okay, baby. By the way that boy looks at you, I don’t think you’ll be able to pretend for much longer.”

He screws his eyes shut and puts his arm over them dramatically. “I know. Please let’s talk about something else. Anything else.”

“Alright,” she says in an almost soothing voice. “Alright.”

She unmutes the spell and he does the same.

“How is it looking in there?” she asks.

“I’m still waiting for Irene,” comes the reply from Quentin. He sounds nervous. But then again, when isn’t he.

“Nothing suspicious for us,” Julia says. “Irene is down here welcoming the funeral’s guests.”

“Her brother looks more like his bodyguard than his associate,” Alice adds. “She’s definitely the brain of this operation.”

Margo nods even though no one but Eliot can see it. “Alright. Kady?”

“Arriving at the criminal’s funeral now—fuck.”

“What’s going on?”

“There are cops,” Kady mutters, “that’s a fuckton of cops, what the fuck?”

“They must’ve changed the schedules, I don’t know,” Julia says, sounding a bit panicked.

“You don’t know,” Kady replies between her teeth, “Wicker, I’m gonna kick you so hard your ancestors are gonna feel it—Hey, sorry,” she says in a much brighter voice, probably talking to one of the cops, “I was at a raid downtown, undercover, didn’t have time to change before coming here.”

“Thank you for coming anyway,” they hear the cop say and Kady replies some platitude about how it’s so sad that someone so young and brave passed before his time and Eliot has to keep himself from laughing because she doesn’t sound like herself at all, but, as previously said, he doesn’t want to be on the other end of Kady’s anger.

“Penny?” Margo asks.

“I’m in the embalming room and I have nothing except something vaguely squishy stuck to my shoe.”

Quentin makes a gagging noise.

Quentin is supremely uncomfortable in that way too expensive suit and Eliot’s even more expensive cuff links.

Irene’s office is cold and impersonal, with pretentious looking abstract paintings on the walls and minimalist urns on a display shelf. The armchair he’s sitting on is made with the kind of leather that squeaks at each micro-movement so Quentin tries to stay as still as possible while he waits for Irene to show up.

He very much does _not_ jump when the door opens and Irene strides from the door to the desk in sky high stilettos. He stands up and fastens the button of his jacket.

“Very sorry for the wait, Mister—I’m sorry, I don’t think my secretary gave me your name?”

“Delacroix,” Quentin says in his best assured voice and extends his right hand to her.

She grasps it and he sees her noticing the cuff links. Eliot was right, of course—not that Quentin is going to tell him.

Irene rounds the desk and sits in her massive leather chair, motioning for him to do the same.

“What can I do for you today then, Mr. Delacroix?”

Quentin clears his throat. “Well, you see, my aunt—on my mother’s side—she is very sick and I fear some… measures will need to be taken quite soon.”

“Oh, I’m so sorry to hear that.”

In his ear, Eliot curses. Quentin does his best not to wince, or jump, or give any indication that he has a spell on him that allows his teammates to listen to what’s happening around him. He’s usually the behind the scene guy and that spell is great then, but having it and being on field work? A nightmare. He doesn’t know how the rest of them does it so effortlessly.

“Thank you,” he replies, mentally willing Eliot to shut the fuck up about how she’s the worst actress he has ever heard, and that’s saying something, he was working in fucking New York after all, and people are _desperate_ in New York, you wouldn’t believe the kind of disasters he met there.

Quentin is going to _murder_ him. Slowly.

“I admit, I’m, uh, I’m a bit lost,” he says, doing his best to tune out Eliot and focus on Irene. “Auntie, she—she practically raised me, you know? So I want what’s best for her.”

“Of course, Mr. Delacroix. I would be delighted to provide any help you need in this trying time, so you can focus on healing and saying goodbye.”

Eliot makes a puking noise.

Irene pulls out a black leather binder and starts talking about funeral plans with “Deluxe” and “Premium” in their names.

Quentin really hopes the others are finding interesting stuff, because right now? Irene is just creepy and discussing funeral plans with way too much zeroes at the bottom of the page and dragging him to the casket exhibit room and showing him truly ridiculous caskets—who the fuck needs a window in a casket? Who? And yeah, it just reminded him of the necrophilia case and ugh, he really didn’t need that.

He must look a bit pale, because Irene puts a hand on his shoulder—_yikes_—and asks him in a voice that almost sounds genuinely concerned if he’s okay.

“Hum, yeah, sure. I mean. The emotion you know,” he tries. “Being here, it—it makes her—her approaching death something, uh, real.”

“Oh, of course, I totally understand.”

“Q, find a way to cut this short, we need to regroup, stat,” comes Margo’s voice in his ear.

He swallows. “Actually, could we—could we meet again, at a later date? It’s a lot to take in. Do you have a brochure of these exquisite plans you showed me earlier? So I can, you know, reflect and start thinking about which one would be best for her.”

“Absolutely, Mr. Delacroix.”

Irene turns on her heels toward her office.

“These _exquisite_ plans, uh?” Eliot mocks.

“Shut up,” Quentin says between his teeth, trying for subtlety.

And failing. “You said something, Mr. Delacroix?” Irene asks over her shoulder.

Quentin coughs. “Nothing, I was just—” he coughs again, clears his throat. “As I said, it’s a lot.”

She gives him a smile so fake it looks like it belongs to a debt collector and keeps walking. Quentin follows.

They regroup at the apartment. Eliot has several batches of hors d’oeuvres ready with cocktails to go with them.

“Alright, what happened?” Quentin asks as soon as they’re in the wards, loosening his tie and removing the cuff links. He throws them to Eliot, who catches them without looking. Show off.

“Irene is dealing body parts on the black market,” Margo says darkly into her cocktail.

Penny sits down heavily and grabs a glass. “The basement is a horror movie. That woman is a fucking psychopath.”

“I followed Irene’s brother,” Kady adds, downing her second cocktail like it’s a shot. Next to her, Eliot looks like he’s judging. Hard. “He met with a shady looking dude. Exchanged envelopes. Shady dude complained the supply was low.”

“Shady how?” Quentin asks.

“He looked like my former history teacher who got arrested for pedophilia.”

“I’ve found a ledger too,” Penny says. “It was badly encrypted. It’s a list of the parts they’ve sold and for how much. It’s mostly internal organs and bones. Stuff that wouldn’t be noticed if the family wants an open casket. Sometimes it’s more than that. Their sales have been down lately.”

Alice looks even paler than usual. Julia collapses in the armchair.

Quentin takes a glass and takes a sip. “What’s the plan?”

“We’re still gonna take all of Irene’s money, but we’re gonna dismantle that body parts network too.”

“That means going after some fucking dangerous people,” Penny says.

“We got rid of a dictator before, remember?” Margo says flippantly.

“He was reigning over like two hundred people and maybe ten talking bunnies, we’re talking about dark magic dealers here,” Penny insists.

Margo raises an eyebrow. “Would you prefer we just steal the money and leave them to start their business again?”

“Of course not! I’m just saying we need to be fucking prepared, that’s all!”

“I _know_, Penny.”

She stands up abruptly and goes upstairs to her room. Penny huffs, glances at Kady, takes her hand and they pop out of the room. Eliot sighs.

“I’m gonna go check on Bambi,” he says and leaves.

Alice, who until then has stayed up, sits down on the couch. She grabs Quentin’s glass and takes a big gulp from it.

“You okay?” Quentin asks and immediately feels like the most useless person alive.

Alice nods shakily. “Necromancy and all that shit freaks me out.”

“Hard same,” Julia mumbles from the armchair. “This is a fucking nightmare.”

Alice and Julia end up going to their respective rooms after twenty minutes of silently finishing Eliot’s cocktails and then drinking whatever alcohol Julia found, leaving Quentin alone in the living room. He removes his jacket, rolls his sleeves up and steps out onto the balcony.

It’s a nice night, cool but not cold, and a light breeze keeps blowing the flame right off Quentin’s fingertips before he can light his cigarette.

A second pair of hands joins his and creates a protective cup around the tip of his smoke.

“Didn’t hear you come here,” he says to Eliot. “How’s Margo?”

“Penny pissed her off and freaked her out, but she’ll be fine.”

Quentin nods. He leans forward against the railway. Eliot lights his own cigarette—without struggling, of course—and does the same.

“Are you okay?” Eliot asks after a few minutes spent without either of them talking.

Quentin shrugs. “Irene is fucking creepy. And being there just reminded me of, uh, of my—” He clears his throat, wills the tears that have started to burn his eyes to go away.

“Your dad?” Eliot finishes softly.

“Yeah.”

Eliot lightly bumps his shoulder against Quentin’s. “Sorry you had to go there.”

Quentin exhales shakily. “Thanks. But Margo was right. It’s what was best for the con.”

“Maybe. Doesn’t mean you have to be fine with it, though.”

Quentin returns the bump but doesn’t move away afterwards. Eliot doesn’t seem to mind having him this close, but, well, Eliot is a very tactile person.

-

Margo exposes her plan at breakfast. It’s simple, but the best cons always are.

Step one: attract Irene’s attention with Eliot’s posing as the owner of a chain of funeral homes wanting to buy hers. Step two: get Irene to believe he can supply her with more body parts. Step three: get into the network and destroy it from the inside. Clean, direct, efficient. Just what they like.

Kady has spent her night building Eliot’s fake profile and fake company and, as always, it’s absolutely airtight. Quentin still triple-checks it. Seemingly satisfied, he nods to Eliot.

“Alright, let’s do this, then.”

Eliot goes to a nondescript diner downtown, sits in a booth with a view on the front door and waits.

In his ear, he can hear Quentin driving to the McAllistair’s funeral home, muttering “I hate this place” on repeat under his breath. Eliot brings his mug of frankly disgusting coffee to his lips.

“Calm down, you don’t have to go inside this time,” he says softly.

On the other side of the spell, Quentin snorts.

Eliot hears him stop the car.

“Margo, I’m in position,” Quentin says. His words are immediately followed by the sound of a camera’s shutter.

“Copy that,” Eliot hears Margo say. It’s just the three of them for this part of the con, but he knows Penny is staying close to Margo at the penthouse, in case they need an emergency extraction.

The tone of a phone call waiting to be picked up fills the silence between them for a few seconds before Irene’s voice replaces it.

“McAllistair’s funeral home, how can I help you?” she says, saccharine and obnoxious as ever. Eliot hasn’t met the woman in the flesh yet, but he truly despises her.

“Mrs. McAllistair?” Margo says in a pinched voice with a heavy New Jersey accent. It takes all of his control to not laugh out loud. “This is Janet! I live a couple doors down from you?”

Irene clears a throat. “But of course! Janet! What can I do for you today?”

“Weeeeell, I was walking my dog earlier, and I saw a car parked in front of your house with a suspicious man inside. I think he was taking picture of your house! Pictures! Can you believe it?”

“Thank you, Janet, I’m going to check that.”

Irene hangs up. There’s more sound of camera shutter after that.

“Irene just looked by the window,” Quentin says. “She spotted me.”

“Alright,” Margo says in her normal voice. “Get to the diner, but make sure they’re following you.”

Quentin walks into the diner not even twenty minutes afterwards. He’s wearing his tragic graduation suit with sneakers. At least he has styled his hair in a messy bun like Eliot had the day before. Small victories. Quentin spots Eliot and joins him in his booth.

“They followed me,” he says as he slides on the opposite bench. He grabs Eliot’s coffee and takes a sip from it.

Eliot glances behind Quentin’s shoulder, to the front door, but Irene and her brother aren’t there yet.

“Are you alright?” he asks.

“Mh? Yeah, yeah I’m fine. Don’t worry.”

In Eliot’s experience, it’s when Quentin says “don’t worry” that you need to worry the most, but he doesn’t have the time to dig further into that. Irene just walked into the diner, wearing a ridiculously large pair of sunglasses. That woman is _not_ subtle. She sits down at the counter, her back to them but he can see she’s slightly angled toward them to listen to their conversation.

Eliot squares his shoulders and adopts his persona’s attitude. He nods discreetly to Quentin, who nods back. It’s show time.

“I don’t think you should buy the McAllistair’s funeral home,” Quentin says.

Eliot scoffs. “Why not? They’re always full, seem to be making good profits. What the hell is wrong?”

“I was there yesterday, just like you asked, yeah? It was all normal and all, but when I left, I saw the brother with some guy, exchanging money or some shit. If you buy them and they have an illegal business on the side, it’ll hurt the Monroe funeral home brand, Sam. I went back there this morning to try and get a picture of the guy but he didn’t show again.”

Eliot sighs. From the corner of his eye, he can see Irene typing on her smartphone, probably googling his fake identity. Sam Monroe, owner of the Monroe funeral home franchise, operating so many homes all over the East coast that spare body parts would never be in short supply.

He smirks. “Fine, let me finish my breakfast in peace, we’ll talk about it later.”

Quentin finishes the coffee, nods to him and stands up. He leaves the diner and soon, Eliot can hear the rumble of the car in his ear.

Some tension leaves his shoulders now that Quentin and Irene aren’t in the same room anymore. Quentin is safe, back to the backstage of the con, where that ginger psychopath can’t hurt him.

He slaps a few bills on his table and starts making his way toward the exit.

Irene’s brother moves from where he was apparently standing guard on the sidewalk to block the door. Eliot smiles.

“Excuse me, you’re in my way,” he says, as clueless as he can.

Irene’s brother doesn’t move.

“Let’s have a chat, Mr. Monroe,” Irene’s too sweet voice says at his back.

Eliot turns toward her, and composes his face to be as pleasant and charming as possible.

“You know me, how delightful.”

“Yes, I know you,” Irene says. She glances at her brother, who moves away from Eliot’s path, but only so they can all stand on the sidewalk. Her smile drops. “You’re the asshole who sent a spy in my home.”

“Only because I was interested in making you a generous offer for your business. It was all in good faith, naturally.”

“Oh please, I know people like you. You’re a shark and you’re here to con me under false premise. I was like you, once. You can’t fool me.”

Eliot forces a smile. “If you say so, Mrs. McAllistair. Don’t trouble yourself, though, I’m no longer interested. A little birdie told me you had some, let’s say, less honorable activities happening in your home. I’m a businessman, I can’t have that sullying my name.”

Irene squints. “Oh, you’re good. But not that good. I could have you arrested for corporate espionage, you know.”

“I could have you arrested for illegal activities.”

Irene smirks dangerously. “It seems like we’re at a bit of a stalemate.”

“Indeed. How about we just go our own way and never interact with each other again? Sounds good?”

“Oh, Mr. Monroe, you’re lucky you’re cute. You own a lot of funeral homes, correct? Well, if you help me acquire some, hm, _items_, for a fair price of course, I’ll pretend I’ve never seen you in my life.”

Eliot refrains from smiling. Everything is going exactly as Margo planned it. “What kind of items, exactly?”

Irene’s brother hands him a piece of paper, folded in four. On it is a list of organs with specifications about them. Eliot feigns to be shocked.

“What the hell?”

“Darling, don’t pretend you don’t know what this is about. You reek of magic,” Irene says, her voice lower than before. “You get me these, you’ll get money, and then we can go on our merry way. Unless you wish to keep working with us, of course. It’s a very lucrative business. Your associate could use a new suit.”

Eliot clears his throat. “How much for this?”

“Twenty thousands.”

He laughs openly. “Fifty.”

“Thirty,” she counteracts.

He raises a sardonic eyebrow. “Forty-five.” Irene only glowers. He shrugs. “Oh well, I guess you don’t need them that badly, then,” he says lightly and pretends to start leaving.

“Fine,” Irene says precipitately. “Forty-five.”

“Deal.”

“When can you have them?”

Eliot feigns to think, his eyes on the list. Alice is a talented sculptor, and with Fen’s help, they could have all the internal organs made as realistically as possible and enchanted to look the part even more in two days time.

“Three days,” he says.

Irene seems impressed. “Damn, you’re efficient, Mr. Monroe.”

He smiles, syrupy sweet. “I try.”

“Bring your associate. I quite like him,” Irene says before turning on her heels.

Eliot has to consciously unclench his hands when she’s gone. His nails have left little crescent moons in his palms.

Back at the penthouse, he makes a beeline for the alcohol cart and gets himself a scotch, neat, that he swallows in one go.

Quentin is on the couch, a few dozens of books strewn around him, one on his lap.

“That bad, uh?” he says without looking up from his book.

Eliot sits down next to him and leans his head against Quentin’s shoulder.

“She’s horrible. I feel like I need to take three boiling hot showers in a row to be clean of her nastiness.” Quentin pats his knee absentmindedly. “What are you reading?”

“Stuff about magic made with dead bodies.”

“Ew.”

“I want to know the kind of people we’re gonna be thrown with.”

At that “we”, Eliot’s heart seizes and his early anxiety about having Quentin around people like that comes back. Irene knows Quentin is his associate now, he can’t just show up with someone new. Building enough trust to make business in those circles is hard enough as it is.

They have a meeting that night and they make plans for the following days. Alice and Fen are tasked with sculpting and enchanting the fake organs, while Julia and Quentin research the magic supposedly done with those organs. It’s nothing they would’ve been taught at Brakebills, that’s for sure. Kady and Penny tour the Hedges and the Black Magic Market, trying to see if anyone knows anything about that body parts dealing business.

Margo and Eliot rehearse the rest of the con, explore the different ways it could go wrong, trying to build every contingency plans they can think of.

But of course, it all goes to hell pretty quickly.

Eliot and Quentin get to the McAllistairs’ right on time on Wednesday morning. Quentin grabs the cooler containing the fake organs, while Eliot adjusts his jacket.

“Remember, they know I’m a Magician but they don’t know about you for sure. Let’s keep it that way,” Eliot says. He hopes his nervousness doesn’t bleed into his voice, Quentin looks tense enough as it is.

“Alright, boys,” Margo’s voice says in their ears. “This is a clean transaction. With Alice’s spell, they won’t realize the organs are fake until they try to do magic with them. It’s important that they take the cooler, Fen put a tracking device in it.”

Eliot doesn’t tell her they already know all of this. Repeating the plan is a way for Margo to reassure herself, so he lets her.

He glances at Quentin, asking wordlessly if they’re good to go. Quentin nods, grim and resigned. Eliot squeezes his shoulder and they make their way to the funeral home.

Irene is the one who opens the door, smiling too big and with too much teeth.

“Mr. Monroe, Mr. Delacroix, what a delight! Please do come in. Are those the organs?” she asks with her eyes on the cooler.

“Indeed,” Eliot says. “Would you like to take a look?”

Irene closes the front door behind them. “Certainly. Let’s go to my office, would you?”

Her brother is already there, a thick envelope in his hand. Irene opens the cooler and observes the fake organs. Eliot starts praying that she doesn’t plan on testing them.

After what feels like hours, she closes the cooler and straightens up, facing them with her shark grin.

“I’m very pleased. You follow instructions beautifully, Mr. Monroe. Here are your forty-five.”

She holds up her hand and her brother passes her the envelope, but before it can reach Eliot’s hands, the door bursts open and a bald forty-something guy with glasses and the face of a pervert marches into the office, flanked by a younger, weasel-looking guy.

Irene looks panicked for a split second before her perfect 1950s housewife façade comes back.

“Everett! What a surprise! I thought our meeting was this afternoon?”

The new guy—Everett, then—smiles thinly. “It was. But after you tried to raise your price so outrageously, I decided not to pay for the merchandise. Just hand it over,” he says with a nod toward the cooler.

“Everett, we had a deal,” Irene says tightly. She sounds like she wants to stay professional and polite, but underneath, it’s all anger.

“The deal is off,” the second guy says. “Give us the goods.”

His hands start to glow and Irene’s brother must have noticed it before Eliot, because he throws a battle magic spell at the second guy before grabbing Irene, who’s still holding onto the cash envelope, the cooler, and running through a side door.

The battle magic doesn’t phase Everett or his lackey, who immediately runs after the McAllistairs.

Eliot catches Quentin’s eyes. He can see the question in them, that “what the fuck do we do now” moment. They can’t break character, they can’t wait for Margo to formulate a new plan or for Penny to pop up and extract them.

Eliot adjusts his jacket, trying to be that businessman who got his deal crashed but who isn’t too perturbed by this turn of events.

“Well. This seems to be a problem between dear Irene and you, so we’re gonna leave you to it,” he says and makes for the door.

“Hold on,” Everett says. He plants himself in front of Eliot and Quentin, looking them up and down. “You see, when Irene told me she could get me the goods in three days, I knew she must have found some new suppliers. I suppose this is you.”

The lackey comes back from the side door. “They’re gone, sir. They took the cooler with them.”

Everett raises his eyebrows and removes his glasses, starts cleaning them with a handkerchief he produces from his breast pocket. So pretentious.

“It’s okay, let them go. We don’t need them anymore. Our new friends here will get us some fresh goods, won’t you?” he finishes, with a dangerous look toward Eliot.

“Absolutely, yes. We would be happy to do business with you,” Eliot replies, sounding much more confident than he actually is. “I mean we don’t have any more with us right now, so you’ll have to give us some time, of course.”

Everett stops them when they try to get to the door. “How will I know you’ll hold up your end of the deal?”

Eliot pretends to be offended. “I do business. If I say we have a deal, then we have a deal.”

Everett smirks. “Cute.” He turns to Quentin. “Why don’t I take some collateral, make sure you stick to your promise?”

Eliot exchanges a glance with Quentin and frowns. “What collateral?”

Everett grins. He looks above Eliot’s shoulder to his lackey. Eliot turns to see what’s going on, and the only thing he sees is the lackey’s hand, closed over a heavy looking paperweight, getting closer to his face at an alarming speed.

Then it’s all darkness.

“—ot? Eliot?! ELIOT!!”

He opens his eyes and everything hurts, and Penny yelling in his face doesn’t help. He groans.

“Look at me,” Penny says. “Do you know who I am?”

“A pain in my ass.”

Penny rolls his eyes. “Do you know who you are?”

“Fabulous.”

Penny rolls his eyes even more. “He’s fine, Margo. Slightly bleeding, but fine.”

Eliot sits up carefully. He is still in Irene’s office. There’s a lamp and some other stuff from Irene’s desk—a flower vase, a binder, a few pens—on the floor not too far from him. On his other side is the ugly paperweight that knocked him down.

“What the fuck,” he mutters.

“I haven’t been able to travel directly here. Someone put up some anti-traveler wards since the last time I was here.”

“What happened?”

Eliot stands up and almost crashes back down, but Penny is quick and keeps him upright.

“We heard your conversation with Everett, then a fight, then your comm went down.”

Eliot sits down heavily in the closest armchair—staying up while the world dances before his eyes is too much work.

“Where’s Q?”

Penny shakes his head. “Not here.”

Eliot slams his hand down on the desk. “Fuck!” he shouts, and immediately puts his head on the desk because shouting when you probably have a concussion isn’t a great idea.

“I found this,” Penny says and hands him a round silver pin. It has symbols and a Latin quote engraved in it.

“What is it?”

“Symbol of the Order.”

“The Order?”

Penny shrugs. “They’re this sort of cult of Magicians. They’re trying to access to a higher knowledge of magic. Like. Gods’ magic or something. Kady and I heard about them when we were investigating the Hedges.”

“Let me guess, they use corpse magic to experiment?” Penny nods. Eliot sighs. “Of course they do. Whatever, our main priority now is to find Quentin.”

They get out of the funeral home and walk a few streets away until Penny can travel them to the penthouse.

Margo immediately hugs him but Eliot doesn’t let himself enjoy it.

“They have Q, Bambi.”

“We’ll find him. But right now, let Julia examine you. We can’t have you out because of brain trauma.”

He relents, even though the only thing he wants to do at the moment is all the locating spells known to Magicians.

Julia takes him to his room and sits him on the bed. She observes him through colored glass lenses that will forever remind him of Professor Lipson, the Head of the Brakebills Infirmary. At least Julia isn’t as chaotic as Lipson.

“You do have a concussion and that cut is deep. The concussion I can take care of, but I’m not sure I can close the cut without leaving a scar,” she says. She bites her lower lip and looks up at him. She’s scared for Quentin, that much is obvious.

Eliot takes her hand gently. “Do what you can so we can both go find our Q, alright?”

She sniffles and nods.

“Beside, a scar will give me that mysterious rugged look that every boy loves, right?

Julia chuckles wetly. “Or just one specific boy,” she says with a knowing look.

And well, she does have a point, so he just shrugs with a “what can I do” smile.

When they get back to the living room, the tension is high.

“I told you those guys were dangerous!” Penny is yelling at Margo, who looks two seconds away from freezing him in place. “But you got too cocky and now we can’t find Quentin!”

“Maybe if you hadn’t taken twenty fucking minutes to get to the McAllistairs’ we wouldn’t be in this position, asshole!” Margo is yelling back at him.

“They have anti-traveler wards in place!” Penny shouts.

Next to Eliot, Julia clenches her fists and a muscle ticks in her jaw.

“Everybody SHUT UP! NOW!” she yells.

Silence follows and the entire crew turns to her, properly chastised. Julia is usually sweet and kind and gentle, but touch her loved ones and she turns utterly terrifying and ruthless—and there’s absolutely no one in this world she loves more than Quentin.

“Report, now,” she demands.

They don’t say anything for a few seconds, then Alice speaks up.

“We tried every single locator spells we know. Nothing turned up, so Q must be held in a heavily warded place.”

There’s an alternative to that, of course, and that’s Quentin being dead, but she doesn’t say it out loud, because they can’t consider it as a possibility. They need to believe Quentin is alive, held captive somewhere, but alive.

“Everett didn’t give you a time or a place to do the exchange, so he’s going to call you and give you instructions,” Margo says, her eyes resolutely fixed on Eliot, as if she’s willing Penny to disappear by ignoring him.

“I have started making new organs,” Fen pipes up, just as Julia’s phone goes off.

The screen indicates “Blocked Number” but she picks up anyway and puts it on speaker.

“Hello?”

On the other side, they can hear ragged breathing. “J—Julia?” It’s Quentin. “Julia!”

“Yes, yes, Q, it’s me!” Her hands are shaky. She puts the phone down on the coffee table and they all congregate around it.

“Q, where are you?” Eliot asks.

More ragged breathing, some sniffles. “El—I—I think I’m—I think I’m in a coffin,” Quentin says in a weak, terrified voice. “I can’t do—I can’t do magic. There’s sigils on the wood I think—I think it’s anti-magic wards.” He sniffles again and they can hear him take a deep breath. “I have a phone but it’s old, there’s—there’s no GPS so you can’t track me.”

“Quentin?” Margo says in the softest voice Eliot ever heard her use. “Did Everett tell you anything about the exchange? Do you have a number, a date, a place?”

“Y—yeah, he—he called me just, just before. I’m texting the details.”

A little envelope appears on Julia’s phone. Everett wants a new cooler to be put in the back room of a specific business before 2pm.

“Look, if you still have reception, you can’t be buried that deep,” Kady says. “If you’re buried at all.”

“I don’t know where I am!” Quentin shouts, panic bleeding in.

Alice leans toward Margo.

“If he’s buried, he has 30 minutes of oxygen left, at most,” she says quietly so that Quentin doesn’t hear.

Eliot’s heart misses a beat. That means that even if they get the cooler to Everett, they can’t be a hundred percent sure that psychopath will give them Quentin back alive.

“Quentin, listen to me,” Margo says. “The important thing for you is to stay calm. We are going to find you.”

“Why don’t we just give Everett the fake stuff in exchange for Quentin?” Fen asks, softly.

“It wouldn’t work,” Eliot says somberly but low enough that it won’t get picked up by the phone. “We have no guarantee that Everett would actually bring Q to the trade. We have to find him first.”

“Guys?” comes Quentin’s voice, small and scared. “Guys, I’m freaking out.”

“We are coming to get you, Q, I promise,” Julia says fiercely.

Margo motions to them to follow her, leaving Julia to calm Quentin down.

“Everett left with a coffin in his trunk like twenty/thirty minutes ago, right?” she says as she conjures the screen. She pulls up a map of the city, with a red dot pinned on the McAllistairs’ home. “Magicians or not, they’re not gonna break the speed limits and risk being arrested.”

“What if one of them is a traveler?” Penny interrupts.

Margo glares at him. “One apocalyptic scenario at a time. I’m taking the scenario where they left in a truck. We all know passing massive objects through portals is a pain, so that makes the most sense.”

Alice and Kady seem to agree. Eliot doesn’t know what to think, but he trusts Margo and Alice is a literal genius.

“Q must be buried in a certain radius of the funeral home.”

Margo makes a circle appear on the map.

“There’s a lot of open fields in that area,” Penny says.

“But it’s daylight,” Kady says. “Everett isn’t going to bury a coffin in broad daylight in the middle of a soccer field. He must have used a cemetery. Graves are being dug every day and left open until there’s a burial.” She tuts and four square-ish fields light up on the map, all opposite of each other.

Even with Penny, they won’t have the time to check them all one by one for a freshly closed grave.

Margo motions to Julia to join them with the phone.

“Q, there are four different places where you might be, but we’re going to need your help to find the right one, alright?”

“Y—yeah, alright.”

“Can you smell anything, can you hear anything?”

“I—I—yes. Water. It just started. Like. Can you hear it? It’s water, like, uh, like a shower? You hear that right?”

They can’t but Eliot leans toward the phone anyway. “Yes, Q, we can.”

“It—it stopped. But—but you heard it, right?”

“Sprinklers,” Alice says. “If he hears them, he’s not that deep in the ground.”

Eliot looks up at Margo. “If he can hear that, he could hear sirens.”

“Sirens?”

They call 911 twice, to the same place, a building next to the funeral home. One for a guy with a gun, the other for someone having a heart attack. Penny travels the crew a street away from the building and they wait, standing guard. A couple of minutes later, the EMT and the cops show up and rush inside.

Kady, Eliot and Julia run to take the ambulance while Penny, Alice, Fen and Margo hijack the cop cruiser.

“Quentin, we’re gonna drive close to the cemeteries. As soon as you hear a siren, I need you to tell me, alright?” Julia says into the phone.

Kady is driving as fast as she can, sirens blasting as loud as possible.

“You’re gonna be fine, Q, we’re on our way to you,” Julia is repeating, and Eliot knows that Quentin is losing his mind even if he can’t hear him at the moment.

“If he panics too much, he’s gonna use all of his available oxygen too quickly,” Kady says to Eliot.

Julia glances at them nervously.

“He’s not calming down,” she mouths to Eliot.

He takes a deep breath. He can do this. He motions to Julia to give him the phone and when she does, he goes to the back of the ambulance, to give himself the illusion of privacy.

“Q?” he says into the phone.

“El? El, where are you?”

“We’re coming, Q. I promise we’re coming. But I need you to calm down, okay? I need you to work with us so we can find you even more quickly, alright? Alright, Q?”

Q’s breathing is labored. “Alright,” he says in a trembling voice.

“Listen to me. Take a deep breath in.” Quentin does. “Good. Now let it out. Slowly. Alright, again. You gotta do this with me, okay? Together, one more time, alright. Deep breath in...and out. Again.”

They breathe together until Eliot can hear Quentin’s panic receding.

“You’re doing good,” he says. “You’re doing great, Q.”

“Eliot—don’t—don’t get off the phone; okay? Please, I—I don’t wanna be alone again,” Quentin says, his voice breaking every few words.

Eliot fights against the tears coming up to his eyes. He swallows around the knot in his throat.

“I’m not getting off this phone until I have you in my arms, Q. I promise.”

“Ask him if he hears anything,” Margo says via the communication spell. “We’re next to the West cemetery.”

“Q, can you hear anything?”

“N—nothing.”

“Okay, it’s alright, you’re doing great. We’re nearly there.”

Eliot buries his face in his free hand, trying not to think about how long it’s been since Alice said “30 minutes of oxygen”, but his brain is a traitor who does the math anyway. It’s not looking good.

“Keep breathing, Q,” he says, hoping Q can’t hear how terrified he is.

“Wait—wait!” Q shouts. “I hear something! I hear a siren!”

Eliot nearly drops the phone. “Ambulance or cops?” he almost yells.

“Ambulance! It’s an ambulance!”

Eliot stands up and rushes to the front. “He’s here! Kady, he’s here! Penny we’re at the Old Point Cemetery!”

They circle the cemetery to get to the gate closest to them.

“Careful, guys,” Margo warns. “I just called Everett and I could hear the ambulance’s siren. He’s standing guard. Go to the newer part of the cemetery, Penny is gonna travel us to the front, we’ll distract him.”

When they get into the cemetery itself, three freshly closed graves greet them.

“Fucking hell,” Kady curses.

“Q?” Eliot says into the phone. “Q, I’m gonna have to put down the phone now. I’m still here, I just need to be able to cast.”

“D—don’t leave me, El. Please. Just—just don’t.”

“I’m not leaving you, Q. I’m here. I just need both my hands to move the dirt. You’ll be alright, just remember to breath, alright? Alright?” he repeats when no answer comes from Q.

“Al—alright.”

Eliot puts Julia’s phone in his back pocket and starts tutting. Telekinesis is his Discipline, but the fact that he is moving dirt is making something that would normally be quite simple much harder. He can feel the dirt straining against his magic, refusing to move and to obey him like it would obey a Naturalist.

It takes him longer than expected to get the first grave open, and by the time he’s done, sweat is running down his face, his neck, sticking his shirt to his back. Kady jumps down the grave and reemerges almost immediately, shaking her head.

Eliot gets in position to start digging the second one, but he’s tackled to the ground by Julia. A Magic Missile whistles above their heads. Eliot glances back. Everett’s lackey is marching toward them, half of his face covered in blood. Penny pops in front of him and throws a punch, but the lackey is quick to dodge it and pushes Penny away with magic, making him fly into a tree.

Eliot and Julia take the opportunity to get cover behind another tree.

Kady has taken cover behind a tombstone and is giving him her own version of battle magic, but in the meantime, they can’t reopen any more grave without being out in the open.

Eliot grabs the phone. “Q? Q, you’re still here?”

“El, what’s going on?”

“Uh so, we’re under attack but it’s fine, Kady has the control of the situation.”

There’s an explosion behind him and when he leans on the side to see what happened, he almost get taken out by a fireball.

“El, I don’t think I have that much air left,” Quentin says in a strained voice.

Eliot’s heart hammers against his chest, panic and anger mixed together. No, he is not losing Q. Not now and not today. He swallows and grips the phone against his ear.

“Q, you’re gonna be fine, we’re gonna get you out. Just hold on a bit more, okay? You have to hold on.” He wipes at his eyes furiously. “I need you, Q, alright? I can’t lose you. So please, hold on. I’m coming for you.”

He doesn’t wait for an answer and shoves the phone to Julia. He doesn’t try to listen to what she’s telling Quentin, focusing instead on his magic.

Eliot stands up, builds an energy shield around him and hopes it’ll hold—until now, his shields have never held more than a few minutes even without being under attack—and plants his feet between the last two fresh graves.

If opening one grave with Telekinesis was hard, opening two at the same time is almost impossible—and painful. But Eliot holds on, and wills the dirt to get the fuck out of his way, no matter how much it burns, how much his body wants only one thing: to lie down and sleep for a week. He focuses on Quentin, who needs him, who’s counting on him to get him out of his nightmare, and he can’t yield. He can’t.

So he pushes and pushes and pushes, ignores the blood that he feels trickling down his nose, and just focuses on getting those graves open.

Finally, _finally!_, the dirt gives way.

Eliot has just the time to move it away from the holes before something shatters his shield and gets him in the shoulder.

He drops the spell. The dirt falls down heavily on the grass, but the graves are open, and that’s what matters. He falls to his knees, unable to move, to do anything more than just kneeling there, breathing hard with dark spots dancing before his eyes.

He vaguely sees Julia jumping into one grave, followed by planks being blasted out of the hole. He thinks he sees Kady and Penny grabbing her and Quentin out of the grave, then Julia hugging Quentin desperately. He isn’t sure. His vision just gets blurrier and blurrier, until he realizes he has keeled over, and he has grass under his cheek. Maybe it’s Margo he sees before he passes out, but even that he isn’t sure of.

-

He is out.

He is out.

He is out and air has never tasted better.

He is out and Julia is hugging him like she wants to break his ribs and he’s clinging to her all the same and they’re both crying and she’s repeating “I love you, I love you, I love you” and he really thought he was going to die and he has been so terrified he can’t talk but he thinks “I love you, I love you, I love you” all the same.

Julia releases him and Alice immediately replaces her. Penny and Kady just clap him on the shoulder, with a “good to have you back, man,” and “never fucking do that again,” respectively.

He expects Eliot and Margo to be next but they’re not here, not right next to him. He turns around on shaky legs and spots them. Or rather, he spots Margo and Fen, kneeling down on the grass a few feet away, leaning over Eliot, who’s lying on his side in the grass.

The panic that has left him only seconds ago comes back in a flash. What if…? No. He refuses to think that.

He’s rooted to the spot, waiting to see what happens, Julia’s hands holding his.

Margo doesn’t look overly worried, so it can’t be that bad. After what feels like hours and seconds at the same time, he sees her and Fen help Eliot sit up against a tree. He’s pale and there’s blood on the lower half of his face, but his eyes are open. Fen produces a water bottle from her backpack and makes him drink. He coughs but seems more awake afterwards, although he is breathing too rapidly, his eyes getting more animated, roaming the cemetery until they lock with Quentin’s. The movements of his chest calm down then. He lets his head lean back against the trunk of the tree, and, as if staying awake is too much for him, his eyes closes again and he slumps on himself.

“What happened?” Quentin asks hoarsely.

“He pushed himself too far to open the graves,” Julia says.

“He’ll be fine,” Alice adds. “I think he’s just drained.”

“Let’s get home,” Penny says.

They join Margo, Fen and Eliot. Fen squeezes Quentin’s hand with a smile, and Margo gives him a brief hug.

“He’s fine,” she says when she sees Quentin look at Eliot. “He just needs sleep.”

He trusts her completely, but he’ll only believe Eliot truly is fine when he’ll open his eyes and be himself.

They make a circle touching each other and Penny blips them out back to the penthouse.

Once back home, Penny brings Eliot to his bedroom, Margo and Fen on his heels. Alice disables the communication spell. She squeezes Quentin’s hand and retreats to her room, like she always does after a case.

Julia makes Quentin sit down on the couch.

“Stay there,” she says.

He knows better than to argue with his best friend when he almost died. She all but runs to her bedroom and comes back with her magical first aid kit.

She takes out her colored lenses, various pieces of glasses and other items he doesn’t understand the use of. He lets her examine him to her heart’s content without a word.

“You’re dehydrated, but otherwise you’re fine.” She leans against him. “I was so fucking scared, Q.”

“I was too,” he says quietly. “I trusted you guys to get me out of here, but—”

“Yeah.”

Fen brings a plate of snacks and a bottle of water to the couch.

“How are you feeling?”

He shrugs, uncaps the bottle “I’m okay,” he says before taking a sip. “How’s Eliot?”

She smiles. “Sleeping.”

He sighs, rubs a hand on his face. “Could you go check on him?” he asks Julia. “Just make sure he didn’t pop something while getting me out?”

Julia runs a hand through his hair, putting a rebel strand behind his ear. “Sure. You wanna come with?”

It’s tempting, but at the moment, the only thing he really needs to do is get out of this damn suit and take a fucking shower. He imagines being enclosed in the shower cabin and his brain immediately goes nope-not happening-fuck you. The next days, weeks, months, what have you, are going to be fun.

He shakes his head, both to clear it from that nice claustrophobic thought and to answer Julia.

“I’m gonna go take a bath.”

Quentin manages to get clean with only a minor freak out (putting one’s head under water is not a good idea when one almost suffocated to death).

He briefly considers burning his suit, but decides to wait for Eliot to be conscious for that. Eliot’d be terribly disappointed if he couldn’t be part of the utter destruction of the suit he hates so much.

Taking a nap wouldn’t be a bad idea given the events of the hours prior, but the idea of lying down alone in the dark in silence brings the same visceral reaction as thinking about being trapped in the shower cabin did.

No sleep for him in the near future, then, awesome.

Quentin ends up in the living room, desperate for something to do. Margo joins him.

“If you’re asking me how I am, I’m gonna scream,” he says before she has the time to even open her mouth.

She sits down next to him. “Fair. Please don’t scream, tho, El needs his beauty sleep.”

He gets comfortable and leans his head against her shoulder. She wraps an arm around him and brings him closer.

“Did Julia see him?”

“Yeah. It’s just total exhaustion. She did a few spells and made him drink something and said he was gonna be fine in a couple of hours. Probably hungover tho.”

Quentin snorts. “Nothing he isn’t used to, then.”

Margo hums.

“How did it end?” he asks. She looks down at him and raises an eyebrow. “With Irene and Everett,” he adds.

“Fen is tracking the cooler Irene took and she may have issued an APB on Irene’s car for illegal organ trafficking.”

“Letting the Muggles handle it then?”

Margo shrugs with her free shoulder. “Alice said that unless you’re a Magician, you can’t tell the organs are fake. They’re even going to decompose like normal ones.”

“Creepy. What about Everett?”

“Kady, Penny and Alice are on it.”

He yawns. “Good.”

“You should sleep,” Margo says. She brings her hand up and starts petting his hair. His bones turns to jelly.

“Unfair,” he mutters against her sweater, his eyes closing by themselves. He knows he almost has his head against her boob and somewhere in the back of his mind is a tiny voice telling him he shouldn’t fall asleep against Margo’s breasts, but honestly, what’s a little boob smushing between friends?

She shushes him, her fingers carding through his hair rhythmically.

“Sleep, Q,” she says softly. “I’m staying here.”

And maybe it’s her presence, or maybe it’s the light coming through the floor to ceiling windows, or just the voices of the people passing through the living room, keeping the silence at bay, but Quentin sleeps.

He wakes up to the front door opening and the voices of Kady, Penny and Alice arguing about something.

“Hey Sleeping Beauty,” Margo says when he stirs. He’s on his side with his head is on her lap, her hand on his shoulder. “Slept well?”

He turns on his back so he can look up at her. He nods. “How long was I out?”

“Just about an hour.” She pushes a few strands of hair away from his face. “You feeling up to eating? They brought takeout.”

He sits up slowly. He rolls his head around, trying to get rid of a crick in his neck, and rubs the sleep out of his eyes. Margo’s eyes are still on him.

“I’m okay, Margo,” he tells her.

She squints at him a little but lets it go, stands up, and wait for him to do the same. They make their way to the kitchen table where Penny is currently unpacking half a dozen of takeout bags, from many different places.

“We didn’t know what to take to we took everything,” Alice says.

Quentin sits at the table.

“I’m gonna get Eliot,” Margo says, just as Fen and Julia join them.

Eliot is barely awake when Margo pushes open his door.

“Hey baby,” she says softly, closing the door behind her then walking to his bed.

He blinks a couple of time when she turns on his bedside table.

“How are you feeling?” she asks as she sits down on the edge of the bed.

“Alright. Ish. There’s a weird taste in my mouth.”

“Julia’s potion.”

He hums. He sits up slowly, in case dizziness and nausea decide to make themselves known.

“Penny, Kady and Alice brought takeout. You hungry?”

“I could eat,” he says. “But I need a shower first.”

“Yeah, you do.”

He snorts and Margo chuckles.

He takes her hand. “How is he?”

She bites her lower lip. “Most certainly traumatized, but he slept a bit earlier. And he looked like he was going to eat before I came up here.”

Eliot nods, turning her words into his head.

“Don’t overthink it, El. Just go take a shower and come downstairs with me.”

Eliot doesn’t let himself stay under the spray for half an hour like he wants to. Instead he takes the what is probably the shortest shower of his adult life, dries himself as quickly as possible without magic—Julia told him to refrain from using for at least 36 hours—and hopes his hair will look good without spells to make it stay in place.

When he climbs down the stairs a couple of minutes later, dressed as usual but without a tie, he almost feels like himself. Margo stays in front of him in the stairs, looking back every two seconds like she’s afraid he’s going to faint if she doesn’t have her eyes on him. To her credits, he is feeling a little weak and is gripping the banister hard enough to make his knuckles go white, but that might not be only because of his recent energy drain. Quentin’s eyes are fixed on him as they make their way to the table, looking tired and worried and relieved all at the same time.

Eliot sits in the empty chair on Quentin’s left, his hand trailing across Quentin’s back. It’s not Eliot’s usual pat, or squeeze, or fleeting touch in passing—not this time. His hand stays on Quentin’s shoulder for a few seconds more than usual, wanting to make sure that this is real, that Quentin is here, alive.

They pile food on their plates and, for a while, nobody speaks except to ask someone to pass one dish or another. No one comments on the fact that Eliot’s and Quentin’s chairs are closer together than any other or, when Eliot lounges back, on the fact that his arm is on the back of Quentin’s chair.

Everyone go their own way afterwards. Kady and Fen leave for some knife throwing practice—because they weren’t terrifying enough as it is apparently, Penny blips out with Alice to “tie up loose ends”, whatever that means, and Julia and Margo go to some “well deserved mani-pedi”, leaving Eliot and Quentin alone in the penthouse.

Quentin curls up in an armchair with a book but looks more like he’s zoning out on the same page than actually reading the thing. Eliot leaves him be, and scrolls mindlessly on internet on his phone, halfway lying on the couch.

“Thank you,” Quentin says after maybe fifteen minutes of silence.

Eliot cranes his neck to look at him. “For what?”

Quentin puts down his book and unfolds himself. “Getting me out, El. You saved my fucking life.”

Eliot’s mouth gets very dry. He switches off his phone, sits up and turns to face Quentin.

“There was no other option, Q. You know that, right? We were always gonna get you out.”

“You did.”

Eliot swallows. “Yeah.”

“You drained yourself to save me. Fuck, El, you could’ve niffined out!”

Eliot opens his mouth but all thoughts desert him. He could’ve niffined out. He hadn’t realized that until now. He didn’t consider it as a risk when he decided to generate a shield around him _and _reopen two graves telekinetically.

“You didn’t think of that,” Quentin says in a very calm, very even voice.

Eliot shakes his head. “No. I just needed to get you out. I meant what I said, Q.” Quentin frowns. Maybe he doesn’t remember in the midst of panicking and almost suffocating to death. “I can’t lose you. I—I need you, Q.”

Quentin stands up from the armchair. Eliot’s heart seizes in his chest. Maybe that was too much. Maybe Quentin doesn’t think of their friendship as something that could be more. Maybe Eliot just freaked him out.

But no, Quentin just sits next to him, close enough that their sides touch from shoulders to knees. He slides his hand between Eliot’s clasped ones and intertwines their fingers together.

“I can’t lose you either, El. You can’t take risks like that.”

Eliot nods.

Quentin leans his head on his shoulder. “I need to sleep,” he says slowly. Sensing that there’s more coming, Eliot doesn’t reply anything and waits.

The silence stretches between them and Eliot lets it. Quentin isn’t great at saying what’s going on in his head and if he needs half an hour to formulate it, then he’ll get half an hour from Eliot.

Eventually, Quentin speaks again.

“I can’t just. Go in my bed. In the dark. I—I can’t.”

“Margo said you slept earlier.”

“She was there the whole time. And there was—there was light. And the guys were coming in and out of the room and talking and—it wasn’t—it wasn’t like _then._”

Eliot holds on tighter to Quentin’s hand. “What do you need?” He feels more than he sees Quentin shrug. “Q?”

“Can I—could we share your bed? Please? I—I don’t want to be alone,” he finishes in a little broken voice that reminds Eliot way too much of the way Quentin sounded when he was still trapped.

“Of course. Let’s go.”

Eliot stands up and tugs on Quentin’s hand to make him follow. They keep holding hands as they make their way to Eliot’s bedroom, only separating for Eliot to strip to his boxers and put his bedside lamp on dim light mode.

They slip under the covers, facing each other and their hands find each other again.

“You alright?” Eliot whispers in the space between them.

Quentin nods against his pillow. Eliot slides closer to him, almost close enough to take him in his arms. He doesn’t. He doubts Quentin wants to feel trapped at this very moment.

Laying on their sides, looking at each other, they’re not talking, but neither of them is actively trying to sleep either. Quentin looks like he’s zoning out, fixing a point between Eliot’s pillow and his shoulder, tracing patterns on Eliot’s hand with his thumb. Eliot just watches him. He tries to push away the thought that he almost lost him today. He can feel tears coming up so he rolls on his back and closes his eyes, willing the tears to go away.

“El?” Quentin says softly. Eliot hums, keeping his eyes closed. “Could you—could you sing to me?” Quentin asks shyly, almost embarrassed.

Eliot smiles and looks at him for the corner of his eyes. “Which song do you want?”

“What was the song you were singing to Margo last time?”

Quentin shuffles closer until his head is on Eliot’s shoulder. Eliot disentangles their hands to wrap his arm around Quentin, who wriggles closer and sighs.

“I think it was _Beautiful Dreamer_,” Eliot says.

“That one then,” Quentin murmurs into Eliot’s skin.

“Okay.”

Eliot clears his throat and lying down isn’t the best position to sing but he starts singing all the same. His voice feels weak, strangled by all these emotions he’s trying so hard to keep buried inside of him. Quentin wraps an arm around his waist. Eliot can feel his eyelashes against his skin he closes his eyes.

“Thank you,” Quentin mumbles, half-asleep during the third verse.

Maybe in the morning, he’ll find the courage to kiss Quentin, but for now, Eliot keeps singing.


End file.
